


Something More than Stolen Time

by mystivy



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: M/M, and a cameo by Bradley Cooper
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-10 23:54:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystivy/pseuds/mystivy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roger and Rafa's relationship is new and compelling and exciting, but what is it, exactly?</p><p>March 2015: Second chapter added!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Desert Roads

**Author's Note:**

> Another short sketch, written in stolen time, ha. Not betaed so any mistakes are mine. This is set just around now (end of January/beginning of February 2014) though it's a world where Davis Cup wasn't on this weekend.

The road stretches from Abu Dhabi to Dubai like a black ribbon through the desert. Heat haze rises from the tar in the distance and the sun stretches yellow across the Western sky. Dubai is a glittering constellation on the horizon. Rafa leans his head back against the headrest and watches it rise from the desert like the remnant shards of a broken mirror. Roger is there in one of those shards, waiting.

It began when Roger called him, when Rafa was still in Mallorca, pacing by the sea wall with his puffer jacket on against the cold wind, phone pressed to his ear. “How’s your back?” said Roger.

“I don’t wanna talk about my back, Rogi,” said Rafa. “All the time I talk about my back. Not with you.”

“Okay,” said Roger. His voice became softer, as if he came closer as he spoke. “But listen, there’s a reason I’m asking.”

Rafa Maymo was back in the car, sitting behind the wheel of a new Kia posting the photo they’d just taken to Facebook. “Oh?” he said to Roger. “What’s up?”

“Mirka’s gone for a few days, back to Switzerland with the girls. I was thinking, if you weren’t training…”

Rafa looked out to sea, across the steely winter waves. “I’m not training,” he said. “Not yet.”

“Then come.”

“How long?”

“She’s—” He falters slightly. “Mirka won’t be back till late next week. I told her I’d stay here to practice.”

Nearly a week. So much time. Images flashed across his mind, of Roger in bed, his naked body lithe between white sheets, touching him and kissing him for what felt like hours. “Tomorrow I come, then,” he said. He thought of Roger’s hands on him, of Roger’s mouth on him, and felt the constant thrum of desire in his body ignite in anticipation.

“Okay.” He could hear Roger smile. “Fly into Abu Dhabi. Text me the time and I’ll send a car.”

“I will,” said Rafa. When he hung up, Rafa Maymo was waiting for him in the car, his phone put away. Rafa took a breath or two to steady himself and then got in the passenger side and buckled his belt.

Maymo started the car. “So,” he said carefully. “Was that Roger?”

“Yeah,” said Rafa. Maymo didn’t actually have to ask. He always knew, somehow, as if he could read Rafa’s mind. 

“So what are you going to tell Toni this time?” Maymo was squinting over his shoulder, looking for a moment to pull out into traffic. “Another few days away with Xisca? She hates having to stay hidden at home when you do that, you know.”

Rafa sighed. “I know,” he said. “I don’t know what I’ll say. Anyway, I think Toni knows.”

“Yeah?” They were driving now, heading back inland towards Manacor. The evening was growing dull, a winter grey that leeched the sunshine from their skin after the heat of Australia.

“Yeah,” said Rafa. “He saw those pictures someone took of us at the Australian Open Kids’ Day and he gave me this look. You know how he is. He wouldn’t say anything but he’s not an idiot.”

“Look, Rafa,” said Maymo, glancing at him, which Rafa hated because the traffic on this stretch of road between Porto Cristo and Manacor was always too fast. “It’s none of my business, I know, but aren’t the two of you kind of banking on Mirka being an idiot?”

A lime green Ferrari cut in front of them. Maymo braked and flashed the lights and Rafa realised he was pushing his feet against the floor as if he was driving. He stopped and pulled his feet back and rubbed his knee, more from habit than any pain. Well, maybe there was a twinge. “I don’t know anything about Mirka,” he said, when the Ferrari had sped away. “That’s Roger’s business, not mine.”

“Has he told her?”

Rafa shook his head. “No.” The clouds were spitting a little and the red of the upcoming traffic lights was split into tiny drops on the windshield. “We don’t really talk about it.”

Maymo said nothing to that. They waited at the traffic lights, the only sound the ticking of the indicator and the intermittent swish of wipers. The rain was coming down a little heavier now. They turned off the main road and down towards the centre of town. “Well,” he said. “We’ll treat your back tonight with ultrasound. I want to make sure you’re healing properly.” 

“Sure,” said Rafa.

“And whatever you do, don’t—” He laughed and shook his head. “Just don’t put any stress on anything, okay? God.”

Rafa laughed, too, and felt his cheeks burn red. “Shut up,” he said.

“Hey, man, I’m just saying,” said Maymo, raising his palms from the steering wheel and shrugging.

“I’m not going to get a sex injury, Titín,” said Rafa, still laughing a little and shaking his head. “That would be even worse to try to explain to Toni.”

Maymo was trying to find a place to park on the street. “Yeah,” he said. “And the Rio organisers.” He pulled in to park tight against the kerb. “Come on,” he said. “If we get started on treatment now, we’ll be done before dinner.”

“I’ve got to book a flight first,” said Rafa, closing the door of the car behind him. “Then we’ll start.”

“You’re the boss,” said Maymo, and he led the way upstairs.

 

He wore his baseball cap, no logo, pulled down low through the airport, through the quiet corridors and discreet routes available to first class travellers. He flew first to Barcelona and then on to Abu Dhabi, asleep for most of the long journey in a quiet corner at the front of the cabin. He woke up now and then from warm, amorphous dreams with a sense, every time, of Roger’s proximity. And every time he looked at his watch and counted down the minutes. Nearly ten hours later and here he is, shimmering through the edge of the desert in a black Mercedes, Dubai looming against the vast blue sky. They pass spots of irrigation in the desolate landscape, farms and wealthy resorts, and petrol stations and dusty side roads and on down the highway towards the coast. He has been here once before and he thinks he can pick out Roger’s building as they drive towards the marina. The car glides into a shadowy subterranean car park, where the driver opens the trunk and carries Rafa’s bag to the elevator.

“I’ll take it, thank you,” says Rafa, and the driver touches his cap and draws back as the elevator doors slide closed.

He pushes a button and nothing happens, at least not until Roger’s voice comes through the intercom. “Yes?”

“Roger, it’s me,” says Rafa. He looks into the dark eye of the camera.

“Rafa,” says Roger, and somewhere he punches a button that starts the elevator. It runs as smooth as oil, up high enough for Rafa to feel it in his ears before it comes to a quiet halt. The doors open to sunlight and Roger.

He’s smiling and relaxed and Rafa drops his bag and kisses him. “Roger,” he says. He pulls Roger close against him and feels his hands and his mouth as needy as his own.

“Oh my god, Rafa, you took so long to get here.” He’s already got his long, lithe fingers working Rafa’s shirt out of his jeans.

Rafa laughs. “The planes go too slow.”

“Tell me about it,” says Roger. He pulls back and looks Rafa wickedly in the eye. “You know, I’ve had to jerk myself off just thinking about you.” He’s smiling, like he knows exactly how that will set Rafa on fire.

And it does. He feels it in every cell, this hunger he’s felt for Roger since he was seventeen years old, the desire that now, ten years later, is every bit as strong and nowhere near abated. Roger pushes him through spacious rooms that make little more than a vague impression on him and through to a shaded bedroom with a huge white bed. He falls backwards and lets Roger undress him, stretching out his legs and raising his hips when requested. Roger tells him over and over again how hot he is, how beautiful he is, and it makes Rafa want him more. Roger peels off his own clothes and throws them aside, and then crawls on top of Rafa on the bed.

“I mean it, you know,” he says. “You’re the hottest guy I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah?” says Rafa, and he makes it almost insolent, almost a challenge. These are the games they play. “What are you going to do about it?”

Roger smiles faintly, silently, and then slides down Rafa’s body till he’s got his mouth on his dick. He licks up the shaft and then sucks hard, and Rafa’s hips rise from the bed.

 

They spend hours fucking one way or another. They fade to a doze now and then, and Rafa thinks maybe they’re done for a while, but it seems that both of them are still as desperately hungry for each other as they were when this began. Which was—Rafa counts during a quiet moment, Roger’s breath warm and damp against the crook of his shoulder—only seven months before. The odd, disjointed feeling he had after his first round loss at Wimbledon led to a texted conversation with Roger, and that became a phonecall that somehow became quiet and breathy, and when Rafa said something about being alone in his bedroom—he didn’t know why he said it, it was just a feeling in his gut—he heard Roger’s breath hitch. Ten minutes later he quietly opened the front door and led Roger upstairs. That was the moment the dam broke. Rafa left the light on that night not to keep away the dark but to believe his own eyes, to believe it was Roger here with him in bed, that it was Roger’s skin against him and his body pressed against his own. He had never felt anything like Roger’s hand in his hair, pushing him down against the mattress as he slicked him up and thrust inside, whispering in his ear telling him how good he felt. He spread his legs and his arms and pushed up just to feel the giddy sensation of being pushed down again. Roger held him there and fucked him until he forgot to be quiet, and then he turned him over and put his palm over Rafa’s mouth as he came.

The thought of that first night still fuels his fantasies. They’ve only had a handful of moments since then, a few times at tournaments and a few stolen days here and there. He thought maybe Mirka’s pregnancy was the end of it all, and perhaps Roger had intended it to be. The day before the Australian semifinal, when the locker room was quiet and empty, Roger stared at him as if facing the decision in his own mind. Rafa couldn’t help it, he shrugged and turned and peeled his shirt off and then his shorts, and by the time he had picked up his towel and flicked it over his shoulder, he knew Roger would follow him to the showers. They closed the cubicle door and put the jets on full blast to drown out the sounds.

“I just can’t get enough of you, Rafa,” Roger whispers, against the skin of his neck. He wasn’t sleeping, after all. The room is dark by now, though the city outside glows a dim amber through the shades.

Rafa runs his hand down the length of Roger’s back and up his arm. “I think maybe we should be doing this all the time,” he says. “Since the beginning. Then maybe…”

“Maybe it wouldn’t feel so crazy?” says Roger. He pushes up a little to look in Rafa’s eyes. “Maybe I wouldn’t feel like I’ll die if I don’t touch you again?” The smile is gone from his face now. He’s deadly serious.

“You feel this way?” says Rafa. 

Roger nods. “I wouldn’t—” he says, breaking off and frowning. “I wouldn’t do this to her if I didn’t feel like that. I just, I can’t…” He sighs. “I feel like I’ll go crazy if I can’t be with you.”

“Me too. I feel this all the time.”

“What will we do?” says Roger. He looks away from Rafa’s eyes, instead watching intently the path his fingers trail down his chest, his hand splaying on Rafa’s belly. “What will I do?” he says, quietly, almost under his breath.

“Hey,” says Rafa. “We have a few days, no?” He takes Roger’s hand in his own and threads their fingers together. “Lots of time to think about these things.”

Roger’s expression softens a little. “Yeah,” he says. “You’re right. How long can you stay?”

“Wednesday. Maybe Thursday.”

“Do your team, you know, know about me?” He’s smiling a little again, folding his leg over Rafa’s hips and pushing a little, teasing.

“Titín does,” says Rafa. “And Xisca. I tell her because when I am with you, I say to Toni and my parents that I am with her, so she must stay inside, in her home.”

“God,” says Roger. “That kind of sucks for her.”

“Yeah,” says Rafa. “A lot kind of sucks for her, being with me, no?”

“I should send her something,” says Roger. “To say thank you for helping you be with me.” He kisses Rafa gently on the lips, then, the kind of press of mouths that says something easy and fond and true.

“I would be with you anyway,” says Rafa. “Even if everybody find out, even if everyone say it’s crazy. Even then.”

Roger is quiet for a moment, serious once more. “I know,” he says, kissing him again. “I know.”

It’s not any kind of promise or any kind of plan, but Rafa feels something shift inside himself, as if a key has just been turned in a lock. He becomes aware of some vague sense that there is more to this thing between them than stolen time. He sees the future laid out like that ribbon road through the desert, and all it takes is to travel it to see the haze coalesce into clarity. Soon, spent and exhausted, they fall asleep together between the cool white sheets. Outside the night rolls on, and Rafa’s dreams are clear and bright and sunlit with Roger in his arms.


	2. Desert Winds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A year later, and Roger and Rafa are still hiding their relationship. It's getting harder, though, and they may not be succeeding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always thought this one could do with another part. Now I think there might be three. Here's part 2.

“I can’t talk, I’m with the girls,” he says, and he turns away from them in case they see the look on his face.

“I just want to tell you I’ll be in Indian Wells tomorrow,” says Rafa at the other end of the line. “Meet me.”

The girls chase around him and he can smell newly-cut grass on the breeze. He stands on the roots of an ancient tree. “Yeah,” he says to Rafa. “I will. I’ll text you.”

“Okay.” A pause. “I miss you.”

The girls are running around him, holding on to his legs, teasing each other. “Yeah,” he says, casually. “Me too. See you tomorrow.” He finishes the call before Rafa can say anything more.

He can keep it quiet, inside himself, for weeks, sometimes months at a time, but once they have made an arrangement he feels his body start to thrum. His throat tightens with impatience. “Come on,” he says to Myla and Charlene. “Let’s go back to the hotel. We have to pack.” They’re not leaving till the morning but he wants to feel as if he’s on his way. Mirka is surprised when he starts balling socks and shoving them in a suitcase, but she shrugs and says, “Okay, we may as well get a start.” They’re leaving early the next day so that Roger can get in his first practice in the desert that afternoon. Bradley Cooper meets them for dinner at the hotel. Roger is distracted but Mirka doesn’t seem to notice. Brad is engaging and funny. He tells them stories of Hollywood parties, of shooting _American Sniper_ , of new projects and on-set pranks. When he leaves he tells them he’ll see them out in the desert soon. “Looking forward to it,” says Mirka, squeezing his hand goodbye.

For all her charm and mild flirtations, though, Roger knows she’d never have an affair.

 

It’s warm and dry in the desert. There’s a falseness to the lush green lawns and golf courses laid out like carpets at the feet of bare, brown mountains rising to the south. “Go to practice,” says Mirka. “I want to go to Trader Joe’s, get some food for the kids.”

“Okay,” he says. She’s putting their clothes away in the wardrobe while he changes for the courts. “Hey, I might go out tonight. Rafa said something about having dinner.”

She looks at him with a kind of calculation in her eyes. At least, he thinks she does. Sometimes he doesn’t know what’s true anymore. “So soon?” she says. Maybe he hears in her voice that she knows, maybe he doesn’t.

“I think he’s already been here a couple of days.”

“He arrived today. I saw it online.”

“Oh,” says Roger. The silence that falls between them for a moment seems unfillable, unbreakable. But she breaks it.

“Hey, it’s fine.” She says it lightly. “Come back later and help me get the kids to bed, then do what you want. I’m beat, anyway.”

“Okay,” he says. Later he thumbs a text to Rafa: “9pm?”

Rafa replies in minutes. “Motel 6, room 5.” He attaches a map pin.

“Ok.” He presses send.

 

Just after nine, he pulls into the motel in a rental car, baseball hat down low over his face. Rafa opens the door before he even knocks and he slips inside. “There you are,” he says, and he presses Rafa against the chipboard door, kissing him, hands flat against cheap gloss paint.

Rafa is newly tanned, warm, glowing against white polyester sheets. The drapes are drawn and they leave the lights on while they fuck. Roger feels like he can do anything here, like he can take Rafa any way he can imagine and care nothing for the world outside this room. In here it’s only them. When they kiss. When they rediscover each other’s naked bodies. When they suck each other off, when he buries his face in Rafa’s ass, when Rafa pushes him onto his back and grinds down on his dick. It’s luscious and dirty and everything he wants in the world.

It isn’t, but he tells himself it is for now.

“Sometimes I think she knows,” he says later, in the aftermath, when they’re both quiet and languid on the bed.

Rafa grunts, his face pressed against Roger’s shoulder, breath on his neck. He lifts himself up to look at Roger’s face. “What would you do if she did?” he says.

“I don’t know,” says Roger. He’s imagined it a thousand times. A hundred thousand. 

Rafa lies back down. “This summer, it will be two years,” he says.

“Yeah,” says Roger. He remembers the phonecall that night in Wimbledon, the heel of his hand pressed against his cock long before Rafa finally asked him to come around. The dizzy delight of it all. It had felt natural. Real. Inevitable. He thought it would shake the world, change everything.

Rafa sighs and curls closer around him. Roger presses a kiss to his forehead. The polyester sheets are scratchy, full of static. He can hear traffic from the street. Somewhere someone shouts, a door bangs. The faucet in the tiny ensuite shower room drips at odd times, no pattern or rhythm. None of it matters. They stay there a while, just resting together, and it’s late when Roger gets back to the hotel.

 

The tournament begins. They’re both on form, coming off wins in Dubai and Buenos Aires. The courts are bouncing high, perfect for Rafa’s forehand and Roger’s serve. They win their way through round after round. They catch each other’s eyes across busy locker rooms, they pass closely in corridors, brushing against each other as if by accident when they meet in doorways. Now and then they stop and talk, but there are always eyes on them. Always people around. They’re drawn to meet in the semis, if they make it that far. They do.

He makes some excuse the night before the match and leaves the hotel, walking to the house Rafa rents in a nearby suburb. The team is gone somewhere—“I tell them I need space, leave me alone, so they go to dinner without me”—and they have fast, furtive sex on Rafa’s bed. They are both a little desperate, a little on edge.

“I’ve got to go,” says Roger, still panting against Rafa’s chest. “I told Mirka I was going for a walk.”

Rafa is silent for a moment. “And she believe you?”

“I don’t know,” says Roger. “I don’t know.”

He cleans up and leaves, one last, ferocious kiss before he walks out the door.

 

The wind has picked up. Dust drifts in slow tides across the practice courts, whipped up into eddies now and then, and back down. Roger spits it from his teeth. “Again,” he calls to Severin, trying to find the rhythm on his backhand. Rafa will play safer forehands, but they’ll also be more erratic. He works to get a handle on the currents of the wind but he can find none.

“He’s going to be as affected as you,” says Mirka. He’s ready, waiting, headband on, rackets strung and wrapped and packed in his bag.

“Yeah,” says Roger.

“Just keep your backhand covered. That’s where he’ll win or lose.”

“Right,” he says, nodding. She knows that he knows, but it’s a ritual for them. It’s always been her, ever since their first days together, talking him through these last moments. In a few minutes he’ll step outside, the cameras waiting to precede him and Rafa to the court. He can hear the thump of music, the roar of the crowd.

“Roger,” she says to him. He stops fixing his wristbands. There’s a look in her eyes like still water, calm and depthless.

“What?” he says.

A knock at the door: “Ready now, Mr Federer.”

“Nothing,” she says. 

He hauls his racket bag onto his shoulder and picks up his holdall. “Everything okay?” 

“Yeah,” she says. “See you after.” She kisses his cheek and opens the door.

 

It’s a bitter, frustrating match. The wind whips dust in his eyes and for a game or two he can hardly see to play. Rafa is as erratic as he expected, some shots dropping neatly inside the lines and some landing wildly out. He can’t depend on his forehand and he has to hit his serves safe. They play staccato, rough tennis and Roger hardly cares, in the end, that he loses. He walks to the net, his eyes still wet from the dust, and presses his forehead to Rafa’s. “Well played,” he murmurs, and Rafa says, “That was terrible tennis.” They both half laugh.

They see each other in the locker room after Roger’s press and before Rafa’s. The place is abuzz with Rafa’s team and his own, though, so they do little more than say goodbye. “Good luck against Novak,” says Roger, before he leaves.

 

“I guess we’ll leave in the morning,” says Mirka. But the boys are grumpy and fretful in the morning and the wind is still blowing in from the desert. “You know,” says Mirka, holding a fussing and crying Lenny. “Let’s stay another day.”

“Okay,” says Roger. He has Leo, whose cheeks are red with teething.

By the afternoon they’re both asleep for their naps. The girls are out somewhere with Nina. Mirka sits on the couch, tired, the baby monitor in her hand. Roger is checking his watch. Nearly 2pm. “Will we put on the final?”

“Oh, go,” says Mirka, irritably.

“What?” he says.

“Just go. Watch the real thing. I’m too tired, Roger. I couldn’t stand it.”

“It was just a thought,” he says, shrugging. “Can I get you something? Tea?”

She sighs, her hand over her eyes. Then she looks up at him with the clarity he recognises from the previous day. Eyes that see right through him. “Just go,” she says. “I’m not an idiot, Roger, and right now I need you to go.”

He steps back, back to the wall, and waits for a moment, but all she does is turn away from him and lie against the cushions. She sets the monitor on the coffee table. “Seriously, go, go watch him,” she says then.

He does. 

 

The cameras find him half way through the first set. He sees Rafa noticing him on the big screen, the constant movement of his legs stopping for a second when he sees Roger’s face. Rafa has a new rhythm today. He has found a way to navigate the wind. Novak is helpless before the onslaught and loses in two. Roger leaves the court before the trophy ceremony.

Novak is in and out of the locker room while Rafa is still doing on-court press, so Roger goes in and waits. No one stops him. Rafa’s team are milling about elsewhere. He sits for a while, his head against the lockers, his eyes closed. The smell of the place, wood polish and showers and soap and sweat. Silence, the sense of stillness after a crowd. Then Rafa barrels in. Toni and Rafa Maymo come in behind him but they both turn quietly and leave at the sight of Roger.

“Hey,” says Rafa, smiling.

“Hey, champion,” says Roger. He stands up. “Another Indian Wells.”

“Yeah.” He’s grinning, dimpled and happy. “What are you doing here?”

Roger toes the ground, hands in his pockets. He feels engulfed, as if he was walking so long on the edge of the cliff he’d forgotten he could fall. “I just wanted to see you play,” he says.

Rafa’s smile fades. “She knows.”

“Yeah,” says Roger.

“Everything?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it.”

Rafa nods. He puts a hand on Roger’s shoulder, presses his fingertips against his jaw. “I have to do press,” he says. “But stay, no? Stay here and I’ll come back.”

“I’ve got to get back home,” says Roger. “The kids, they need me.”

Rafa nearly says something, then, but he stops himself. “Okay,” he says, instead.

It’s not about the children. He knows they’ll always have him. It’s that he feels as if he’s in a fog, as if there are roads diverging and he cannot even see them. The walks outside and breathes deep in the desert air. The crowds have already dissipated. He walks through the tennis centre in the soft early evening. The wind has mostly died down, but caught in a gust is today’s brochure. He bends down to catch it. The photo on the front is from the moment at the net at the end of their semifinal. His forehead is pressed against Rafa’s temple, their eyes are closed and they’re both smiling a little. Rafa’s hand is on his stomach and his arm is wrapped around Rafa’s waist. He stops dead in his tracks, staring at it in the falling light.

After a few minutes, he swipes open his phone. “I’ll be late,” he types.

“I know,” comes the reply.

“Text me if you need me. I mean it.”

“I will. I know,” she says.

There is a lot to be said, he knows that. Things will need time. But for now, he turns around and heads back inside.


End file.
